He grasped her hand. His fingers, strong and slightly callused, entwined with hers as he tugged her away from the kitchen. The sensation was every bit as enthralling as she’d imagined. Surprised, Molly let herself be led for a moment, her only protest a backward glance at the flour, sugar and milk assembled in a tidy row.
The supplies seemed to offer a silent rebuke. Are you here for a pleasurable stroll? they asked. Or a businesslike arrangement?
She couldn’t very well expect Marcus to help with her dreaded bookkeeping, she realized abruptly, if she didn’t hold up her end of their bargain.
“Wait! You haven’t eaten yet,” Molly said. “I’d planned biscuits with honey for breakfast. The fire is stoked and the oven should be ready soon. Aren’t you hungry?”
“Hungry?” Marcus repeated. As though taken aback by the question, he examined her.
In the process, his regard changed. At first rather hurried, it mellowed into a leisurely perusal that caught Molly by surprise. He did look hungry, she thought—and with a multitude of appetites. Not all of them, Molly expected, could be satisfied with her baked goods. Again she remembered her sisters’ cautioning words.
She may have been a bit…reckless in thinking she could deal successfully with a man like Marcus. Particularly given her unexpected, untoward interest in him.
“Let me worry about that,” he finally said, freeing her from his heated gaze. “Get your hat.”
“No.”
He looked perplexed. On him, the expression seemed a poor fit. Perhaps it didn’t get used often.
“What?” he asked.
“No,” she repeated, pulling her hand from his. She straightened her spine. “I’ll not get my hat.”
He frowned, obviously displeased at her refusal. But why? Surely a walk wasn’t so urgent as all that. Yet Marcus seemed quite put out that she…no. There was something else afoot here. Suddenly Molly was sure of it.
“But the outdoors awaits,” Marcus urged again.
Beyond the glass-paned window he gestured toward, ponderosa pines crowded the small house’s yard. Mixed between them, the slender-trunked oak trees common to the northern parts of the territory brandished multiple-colored leaves. Molly could almost smell the fresh scents she knew the trees carried.
Marcus didn’t glance longingly at the landscape at all, she noticed. It was then that she realized the truth.
“You’re afraid!” She turned in wonderment to face him. She crossed her arms with the conviction of her revelation. “You’re trying to divert me from our tasks because you’re afraid. I can’t believe it!”
“I’m not afraid of anything.”
“You’re afraid of baking.”
“Ha! Ridiculous.” He ran a hand through his hair. “You women and your outlandish ideas.”
“Identify the flour,” Molly challenged, sweeping her arm toward the supplies at the other end of the room. “I dare you.”
“Don’t be childish.”
“He said, glowering,” she teased.
“This is a very unbecoming side of you. Do you think I’m so helpless I can’t pinpoint something so basic as flour?”
Silently she waited. The flour, salt and baking powder were in identical canvas sacks, perhaps eleven inches high and eight inches wide. Molly had sewn them herself, specifically for transporting baking provisions today.
“I think you’re afraid to try,” she said. “Don’t worry. Everyone is uncertain at the beginning.”
“I am never uncertain.”
“That’s something we have in common, then.”
Her pronouncement seemed to goad him into action. With one final, exasperated look, Marcus went to the worktable. He jabbed his finger toward one of the sacks. “This is the flour.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course.”
“Then we’ll begin the biscuits with two cups of that.” Molly joined him at the opposite side of the worktable and pointed to the teacup she’d found for measuring. “Go ahead and measure some out, then pour it into that bowl I prepared.”
Marcus blanched.
“Afraid you’ve guessed wrong?”
He scoffed and grasped the teacup. It looked ridiculously fragile in his hand as he scowled into its bowl. He drew in a deep breath, then thrust the teacup into the opened sack he’d chosen.
White powder billowed upward. Molly hoped he liked sour biscuits. She could tell from this distance that the substance held suspended in a stream of sunlight was far too fine to be the rather coarse milled flour she’d purchased at the mercantile. Sugar didn’t waft in a cloud like that. Neither did salt. Marcus had chosen the baking powder.
She waited for him to admit his mistake. He did not.
Instead, he peered skeptically at the teacup, now overflowing with baking powder. His drawn-together brows were frosted with white. The sight might have been humorous, if not for the earnest concentration on the features below them.
Marcus snagged the rim of the earthenware bowl. He dragged it closer. He held the baking powder above it and prepared to empty the teacup.
“Wait!” Molly cried. “I can’t let you do it.”
He gave her a bland, cocksure look. Without taking his gaze from her face, he overturned the cup. Baking powder landed in the bowl with a muffled whump.
Oh, no. This was worse than she’d thought, Molly realized. There would be no reasoning with a man who believed himself capable of everything. She hurried around the table to Marcus’s side.
“That’s baking powder,” she protested, staring aghast into the bowl.
“And…?”
“You don’t need a whole cup of baking powder for this recipe. Unless you’re making biscuits for two hundred people.”
He squinted. “We’ll need a much larger bowl.”
“No, we won’t. We’ll need to start over.”
Marcus gave the bowl an accusing look. “You see? We should have taken that walk I suggested.”
“No, we should have begun at the beginning.” She refused to be swayed. Because Marcus was otherwise so capable, Molly had credited him with too much kitchen competence. But that didn’t mean she intended to give up, or let herself be distracted from her mission. “I can see now that I should have begun with something simpler for you. Something like…”
“Like a walk.”
“Like toasted bread,” she decided.
“I prefer biscuits,” he said stubbornly. “I have biscuits every morning at the Lorndorff Hotel.”
“Every morning?”
He nodded. “Coffee, eggs, an edition of the Pioneer Press, and biscuits.”
“What if you fancy griddle cakes one day?”
“I prefer biscuits,” he said firmly.
Evidently Marcus Copeland was a creature of habit. That masculine trait could work to her advantage, Molly decided, if she handled things correctly between them. She’d simply have to train him properly, and she’d succeed. Magnificently.
“Then it’s biscuits you shall have today,” she acquiesced with a smile. Molly scooped the baking powder from the bowl. She returned it to its